Our community loves Android apps and we love hunting for new up and comers that we can suggest. We already cover the most popular and top updated apps, but we thought it would be interesting to have a weekly column focused on underground apps that have less than 50k installs.

Can we pick a relatively unknown app and help boost their installs and exposure to new highs? That’s the challenge we are taking on with a new experiment I’m going to call #thenextinstall.

We polled some of readers and asked them to submit recommendations for Android apps that they thought had the potential to become hits. After reviewing all the submissions, we created the following list apps.

Browse over the new app suggestions and let us know if any of them make it onto your device.

Forecast

Pitch: Forecast is a fun and simple way for friends to share where they’re going. Foursquare required.

Cogs

What’s next? How can I participate?

Over the coming week, we will monitor all the apps and see which generate the most buzz. We will be watching the installs, download clicks, review scores, and more to see which app comes out on top. Next week we will name the winning app, and then put it up against nine new apps to repeat the process.

Share this post with a friend who has an Android device and ask them to try out one of the apps from the list.

Taylor is the founder of Android and Me. He resides in Dallas and carries the Samsung Galaxy S 4 and HTC One as his daily devices. Ask him a question on Twitter or Google+ and he is likely to respond. | Ethics statement

Great idea for a column, but to be honest, this list is hardly breathing waves of Android enthusiasm into me. We must have better to offer than the likes of a couple of these. Forecast does look interesting, but given that Foursquare never implemented future check-ins (this most have come up in prod dev meetings), you’d have to question whether that demand is there…

I have an app I would like to suggest, Its called Transparent Screen. I feel its an under the radar app that can be useful for some. But it does have 500,000+ installs. So maybe it would be better to post in a differnt thread. Anyways the app uses your phone’s camera to show what’s infront of you while using other apps. You can control the opacity. So if your someone who walks around a lot while using your phone, it’s helpful for preventing injury and emberrassing moments. If nothing else, its something fun to play with or just show off.

I think Default App Manager Lite perfectly fits this list. It has an unique and simple way of setting / clearing user defaults which I have not seen any app do so far. Plus, the app is relatively less known and has less than 50k downloads..